"The crowd kept growing and throwing more punches and kicks and trying to grab us," he says. "There was no control to it."

"The crowd kept growing and throwing more punches and kicks and trying to grab us," said Cooper, who was punched 10 times in the head, according to his producer.

"It was pandemonium," he went on. "There was no control to it. Suddenly, a young man would look at you, and then punch you right in the face. The instinct is to try to punch or push back, but you really can't in a situation like that. That inflames the crowd even more. All we could do was walk as quickly as possible and stay together and seek a safe location."

Cooper broadcast from a roof near Tahrir Square, where the violent demonstrations between protestors and Mubarak supporters raged on. According to CNN's live blog, several gasoline bombs went off and gunfire was heard.

Cooper described how he and his crew got into the situation in the first place.

"We were trying to make our way to the no man land," he said, referring to a neutral location between the opposing groups. "We never made it that far. We were set upon by pro-Muburak supporters punching us in the face."

He said one attacker "tried to break his [cameraman's] camera… they didn't want any pictures taken. Frankly, we weren't even taking pictures with the big camera. I was using a Flip camera, which they didn't notice."

"But the big camera - they were trying to grab it. We immediately started to turn around because we realized the situation would get very bad very quickly."

He also posted on Twitter: "Got roughed up by thugs in pro-mubarak crowd..punched and kicked repeatedly. Had to escape. Safe now."